


Dust Hymns

by PSIDontKnow



Series: Knitting Lace out of Lashes [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe, Fucking Desert Gothic shit here, Gen, Its the Red Lion, Sheith if you squint, That original character tag is actually just a lie, The Aesthetic AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-12
Updated: 2016-07-12
Packaged: 2018-07-23 13:16:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7464771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PSIDontKnow/pseuds/PSIDontKnow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>{There's a dew under the bed where<br/>Sweat and dreams hath tread<br/>Your feet would touch the floor<br/>And drift around like boards<br/>Hang you like a lullabye}<br/>--------------<br/>There's a town built on the edge of a desert, a small type of place, where everyone knows everyone. It's normal, sun worn and older than old, some buildings dating back to pioneer days. The only thing that makes this town different is a rumor.<br/><i>Don't go into the desert, you'll never come out.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Dust Hymns

**Author's Note:**

> Will I stop writing AUs?  
> Will I stop posting on Mobile?  
> No.  
> (Big thanks to @Daemons parks/Chronic combustion for encouraging me)

There's a town built on the edge of a desert, a small type of place, where everyone knows everyone. It's normal, sun worn and older than old, some buildings dating back to pioneer days. The only thing that makes this town different is a rumor.  
_Don't go into the desert, you'll never come out._  
Those words have been whispered around town as long as there's been a town, stories of beautiful oasises and glimmering black sands offset by the eternal warning. If you go into the desert, you don't come out, not alive. Sometimes, a body is found by the edge of the desert, between two bushes that are always covered in a strange purple flower, the markers of the desert's edges, but they're always far beyond gone, most already picked clean by the predators and carrion eaters.  
About fifteen years back, there was one who came from the desert, still moving on his own. He walks into town, an old tattered cloak billowing behind his little shape. He doesn't say hi to anyone, just buying some food, looking at the packaging like he's never seen it and paying with out of date money. When the cashier asks where he lives, if he'd like the woman's son to walk him home, he answers simply.  
"I live in the desert, my friends will come for me." He then takes his bag of goodies and walks right back out of town, straight into the desert and is immediantly swallowed up by black sand. There's a cry of shock from those on the edge of town, just feet away from the boarder when he was swallowed up and they all feel like they should have down something to stop that little boy's death.  
He comes back a month later, buys things from the store, and leaves again back to the desert. He comes back every month, buying whatever catches his eye, paying the wrong amounts with old money, and leaving again, back to the desert.  
_Wraith,_ they whisper about him, _ghost, demon, sand child._ He nods at the person that calls him that, four years after his first appearance, and speaks for the first time since then.  
"That's what my friends call me, they call me Sand Child." The other child that had called him that grins broadly.  
"Well, is that your name then?"  
"i - I - I don't really have a name, not like humans do." The sand child frowns before the older boy takes his hand, tugging on it.  
"Then we'll have to find you a name."  
\------------------------  
No one that sees him in the desert makes it out alive, most already on the edge of death when the Sand Child comes. He comes for them, a reaper from the desert, skin that practically glows in the moonlight and pitch hair, eyes glowing a feral indigo in the darkness. The shadows that live beneath the sand crowd around his ankles, and there's the sound of many people speaking, all soft cooing and praise.  
_Our pretty boy, such a pretty boy, our child, so good, such a good boy. Do you want to kill this one? Do you want to protect our home too? Good boy, good boy, we love you, such a good boy._  
He's 12 when he kils his first human.  
\-----------------------  
The boy helps him choose a name, the two of them settling on Keith.  
"And you can call me Shiro." He smiles, all of the warmth of the sun in that expression, and the newly named Keith thinks, 'I will never kill this one.'  
\-----------------------  
Twenty years before, he is born to parents.  
Who they were do not matter, only that they had run into the desert with him, leaving him in the sand to die before darting back to the safety of the town. The child had wailed into the night, a bloody red eclipse in the sky above him until shadows formed from their hiding places beneath the sand.  
_A tiny human?  
_A babe!  
_He's not a threat  
_So noisy though  
_What do we do?  
The shadows begin clammoring around him, some jostling him, some reaching soft inky appendages to brush against his hair, his face, his blanket, tiny fists reaching for the limbs.  
_What do we do?  
_What do?  
_Rose!  
_Rose, Rose, tell us Rose!  
The shadows part for another shape that rises from the sand, is made from the sand and shadows and the glimmers of embers, yelling her name as she leans, her lion like snout nosing at the abandoned child before she changes form to something more human like.  
_We'll take him to the old place  
_The old place?!  
_He'll be our new guardian!  
_A good boy, he'll be our good boy.  
The human like shadow is followed by the others, walking across the sand until she reaches a worn shack, one where the last human the desert had chosen had once stayed. There they would raise him. She smiles, teeth like embers, as he coos and reaches for her face before falling asleep against her.  
He'll be such a good boy.  
\------------------------------  
Keith always makes a point of stopping by to say hi to Shiro when he comes to town. Shiro is his first friend, the first human that's not afraid of him. Sometimes, he stays with Shiro for hours, Shiro pointing out the human constelations and Keith showing him the ones that Rose had shared. He loves Shiro, his heart hurts to think about how much he loves him, kinda how it does when he thinks of Rose, and he holds Shiro's hand for the first time when he's fifteen, because that's what humans do, right?  
Shiro doesn't say anything, just smiles at him, squeezes his hand softly, and continues on telling his story about how his little brother had tried to pick a Juniberry flower and it had hissed at him.  
Keith falls asleep holding Shiro's hand.  
And does so many more times after that.  
\----------------------------  
Once, when he is three, Rose takes on her human shape once again to lead him to what they're protecting. His hand is tiny and rough in hers, his other near his mouth as he gnaws on the knuckles, looking around. The mountain had been in the background of the desert always, but now they're going into it, and it's both exciting and nerve wracking. Rose eventually picks him up before walking into a cave, and the boy wraps his arms around her neck.  
Rose is warm, nice and warm, unlike his other friends, and that's all he's thinking about, burying his little face in her shoulder that smells of burning and dozing off. She wakes him up not long later as the cave widens into a chamber, blue crystals glowing along the walls, and Rose bounces him on her hip.  
"This is it, my pretty boy." She croons softly, running ashy fingers through his hair and purring. It's soothing and he tries to make little purring noises back to her. They're stunted, not natural like hers, but it still makes her smile that he tries. She's still purring when she brings him to the crystal that takes up the center of the chamber. Takes him to see the woman imprisioned in it.  
"This is the princess." Rose intones, watching with burning eyes as the Sand Child leans forwards, pressing his tiny palms to the crystal.  
"One day, she'll wake. But until then, we must protect her, do you understand?" And he nods with all the grave importance a three year old can muster, resting his forehead against the crystal, over where the princess's own forehead is.  
"Don' worry princess, I'll protec' you."  
\--------------------------------  
The month after Keith falls asleep holding Shiro's hand, after he tells him of the Princess, he's gone when Keith returns.  
\---------------------------------  
He's taken to protecting the desert, to protecting the princess, easily in his twenty years. He's grown long legged and sinewy and bitter. The sand swirls around him like he's his own personal storm and it suits him. Still, he's not emotionless, still is shocked when the shadows begin to crowd around his ankles, whispering something different than normal.  
_Pretty boy, our pretty boy, good boy we have a gift for you, our boy, our child, hurry before the gift spoils, hurry hurry, make haste.  
He launches into movement off of the shack's rickety porch, pulling a bandana over his face to block out stray sand as he runs to where he keeps the hover craft he'd taken from an intruder. The little shadows never give him gifts, only Rose, and this is strange. He goes as fast as he can, following the trails of black sands that have been left for him, until he sees something half buried in the sand. There's a spike of fear - how had a human gotten this far with out him knowing? practically to the heart of the desert? - as he jumps off of the small craft, knife already in hand as he walks over to the half buried body, rolling it over with the toe of his boot.  
He wished he hadn't.  
There's new lines to his face, he's older and broader, but even with bicoloured hair and a gash across his face, blood and sand congealing together, Keith still recognizes Shiro.  
\---------------------------------  
When Shiro had left, Keith had raged and ranted, tearing apart his home in a fit of rage. There's fire licking at his skin, like how Rose had been trying to teach him, but it's not under his control and he leaves scorching handprints in the wooden walls, leaves holes where his fists sink into the old wood.  
Leaves his old feelings behind in a wave of anger and bitterness.  
\---------------------------------  
It's been two years since Keith had seen Shiro, and they haven't been kind.  
He carts the unconcious man back to his home, laying him out carefully on the porch, using the light from the moon to inspect Shiro. The gash across his face is sticky with congealing blood and sand that will need to be washed out, there's bruises blooming on the little bit of skin he can see without stripping him of his long shirt and pants, but it's Shiro's right arm that has him concerned.  
Or the lack of one.  
There's just a stump, a shard of bone sticking out from the still oozing wound, and it makes Keith's stomach flip. He can't just leave the man to die, he can't kill him, because all that anger has evaporated into relief over seeing his only friend for the first time in two years. He jumps up, running into the house to grab his first aid supplies. The shadows are seeping up through the cracks in the porch, inspecting Shiro and speaking in low murmurs.  
_Pretty boy's human, pretty boy's star, oh he tastes like stars, no wonder our good boy likes him.  
"Shoo!" He yells, stomping a booted foot before crouching near Shiro's right arm. His eyes, glowing indigo in the dark, flick back and forth between the wound and the man before he settles on a numbing agent he'd gotten once, a gift from one of Rose's brothers. The syringe is small, almost hard to see in the first aid kit, but he digs it out, stabbing it into the wound like he'd been shown, only waiting a minute before dousing a cloth in peroxide and cleaning the sand out of it. He's surprised when the rag comes away with glints of purple, eyes watering at the menthol smell of magic that is not his own or Rose's.  
Bandaging it is an awkward affair, done as quickly and carefully as he can before he douses a clean rag and goes to clean Shiro's face. At the first soft press of the cloth, Shiro gasps, eyes still closed tightly as he shakes his head to rid it of the stinging pain. Keith doesn't back off, merely grab's the elder's jaw, forcing his face still so he can clean the wound.  
After, when the gauze is wrapped around his head, he feels guilty for the tears that roll down Shiro's face. He can't do anything more though, so he cleans up, ignoring the shadows as they come to inspect Shiro again, and settles on the porch, waiting for him to wake up.  
\-----------------------------------  
Somehow, he manages to doze off and only notices this when he's woken by a scream. Keith jumps awake, reaching for his knife before he remembers. Shiro is on his porch, hurt and not as unconcious as before, back arching off of the wood as he screams. It's wordless, an animal scream of pain and fear.  
_Pretty boy, your pretty star, a terror star, terror star! Make him stop, make him stop the noise!  
The shadows are oozing up between the cracks, looking like black, boiling water as they clamor between Keith and Shiro, and he knows well enough that they will make Shiro stop screaming if he doesn't. It's hard to tamp down on his own fear, to think through the ruckus of the shadows murmuring and Shiro screaming, and the first thought that comes to mind is when Rose was teaching him to use the fire, when it tried to consume him.  
"Shiro, c'mon, you're fine." Keith sits on the older boy's abdomen, pinning him to the ground, leaning until he can place his forehead against Shiro's own.  
"Shiro, wake up." He growls out, hands pining the other's to the deck, watching carefully for any sign of Shiro waking up. The shadows have gathered closer as Shiro's screams stop, a comforting prescence at Keith's side, their voices soothing to him.  
_Hush pretty star, pretty boy will take care of you, such a good boy he is, take care of this falling star, broken broken falling star, burnt too brightly, our good boy will burn you back.  
In the middle of murmurs, of coalscing shadows and the desert air kicking up around them, Shiro opens his eyes.  
\-------------------------------------------------  
One time, when Keith is 15 and Shiro is 17, Shiro tries to follow him home.  
Keith doesn't get more than ten feet into the desert before the shadows are hissing, bubbling up from the sands, their voices nothing like the soothing coos he'd grown up with.  
_Intruder, a human, trying to follow our pretty boy, hurt our home, hurt our boy, he will not live.  
Keith turns on his heel to see Shiro standing just inside the boundry line of the desert, shock written on his face as the Shadows grow bigger, threatening, making a barrier between Keith and Shiro. There's a moment where fear shoots straight through his heart before he stomps over to the human, grabbing his wrist in a bruising grip and glaring down the shadows.  
"This one is _mine!_ " His eyes flash with light and the shadows sink back into the sands, their low murmurs almost intelligable. Shiro is looking at him with wide eyes, but he hasn't shaken off Keith's grip, not even as the boy marches him back over the boundry.  
"Never enter the desert, humans can't survive in there."  
\--------------------------------  
There's a fever in Shiro's eyes, but he recognizes Keith, sits up with help and leans heavily against him, resting his head against the shorter man's shoulder and closing his eyes back, as if it's too much effort to keep them open.  
"What happened out there?" Keith whispers softly, not looking at Shiro but at the little glowing lights that function as the shadows eyes, the creatures watching them both from the edge of the porch. He knows that one or more will soon get Rose, that she'll surely kill Shiro, because he's a human, but for now, he wants to know.  
"I don't .... really remember. There was a place, and I was - doing something." Shiro pauses, collecting his thoughts, and Keith doesn't like the sound of his breathing, too hard, bad in conjunction with the too warm face pressed against his shoulder.  
"I escaped, and I remember hearing someone, they told me where to go... Then I woke up and you were here." He shifts a bit, enough to force Keith to look at him and the smile he's sporting, and it's hard to remember why he was mad at Shiro for two years.  
_She's coming!___________________  
\--------------------------------  
Keith has met Rose's siblings a few times before, always at the Princess's resting place. They're other protectors of her, each guarding a way into the mountain.  
"Each of us find a person, a protector to give our power too, and, one day, when we each have one, she'll wake." Prin had explained once, their green eyes and leafy hair fascinating to a five year old.  
"You're the first guardian Rose has had in a while." Lily says with a flash of his pearl teeth, so like Rose, but the most water the eight year old had seen.  
"I see why the shadows call you a good boy, you'll be the best of us." Amaret says in his voice that sounds like rocks tumbling down the mountain and the twelve year old preens.  
He'd never been spoken to by the spirits mother, the woman the last line of defense for the princess, and he'd been fine with that. If she didn't want to acknoldege him, that was her perogative. Besides, she was proabably worse at talking than him, since she hadn't left the princess's side in forever, according to all of the guardians.  
\-------------------------------  
She walks with all the grace and glory a matriarch could ever want, her moonlight hair glowing faintly in the night, yellow eyes offset by the black of her skin, speckled in bright specks that look like stars.  
"Mother." Keith breathes out, the only name he knows for her, and he wants to hide Shiro from her judging eyes, from the largest and most powerful of the guardian spirits. She tilts her head in acknoledgement, walking onto the porch and kneeling in front of them.  
"Rose's little spark." Her voice cracks with age, her fingers thin and boney as they come up to cup his face, but Keith immediantly feels comforted, because he's known her almost his whole life.  
"You're so loyal, so pure, a fire that both burns and purifies. She did good in chosing you." She lets go of him then, the silver bangles around her wrists jingling as her weathered hands move from Keith's face to Shiro's.  
"You, the little spark has chosen you. He's told you of Rose, my daughter?"  
"Yes ma'am." His voice cracks from dryness, but his eyes are wide, nearly sparkling with the wonder of seeing one of the guardian spirits in person.  
"You will not live for three more suns, the poison magic in your veins has already corrupted you too far for a human to live through it."  
"Mother! Isn't there -"  
"Hush child, I'm speaking, let me say my piece." Keith's mouth shuts with an audible click, glaring straight into the old woman's yellow eyes. She doesn't seem to care though, turning her gaze back to Shiro.  
"The little spark is fond of you, and I can see why. You're strong, you're kind, but also hard headed. You're a star, you'll keep burning brightly until you implode. Little Star, I do not want to see your light snuffed out. If you would like, you could become Mine, like how Little Spark is Rose's. You would no longer be fully human, but you will survive. The choice is yours." She releases her hold on Shiro's face, leaning back on her heels to watch them both. Keith wants to ask Shiro to take her up on this, so that he'll live long enough that Keith can remember why he was angry at him, so that Keith can show him the desert, keep him as his, but he can't, not with Mother's eyes on them, judging, telling him to let Shiro make his own choice.  
"...Do it." Shiro says after a deep breath, dark eyes staring straight into the Mother's, and she smiles.  
"A good choice, Little Star."  
\-------------------------------------------  
Don't go into the desert.  
It's been said as long as there's been a town on the edge of the desert, been said since long before that, since a princess was sealed into a crystal to sleep, since her five guardians began to look for their souls they had lost, reincarnated into humans that will become theirs. Don't go into the desert or you'll never come out alive. It holds true for all, except for two that leave the desert once a month, traveling into town.  
No one is sure if they're still alive either, the tall one was pronounced dead a year before he showed up, a scar across his face and his right arm made of a crystal that looks like a night sky, looks like obsidian and lazuli and mica, veins of gold and silver through the black and blue. He's paler the first time, bags under his eyes like a corpse, but he's better after that, smiling at the people that used to be his family, but never leaving the smaller one's side. They come, they shop, they leave, dissapearing into the desert in a gust of sand and ash.  
No human survives long in the desert, but these two walk with lions that are made from sky and fire, are followed by shadows that live under the sand, and they're not really human any more. No one doubts this, and anyone that steps into the desert, local or tourist, still do not make it out alive.  
Still, there's a feeling that everyone, the Sand Children, the Lions, the human townsfolk can all feel.  
Something is coming.

**Author's Note:**

> This is it  
> The most aesthetic AU  
> There will be a part for each of the others and most likely a part for Allura waking up  
> If you didn't get it, Rose, her siblings, and their Mother are the Lions!  
> Come ask me questions on twitter @psidontknow


End file.
